~ Be Brave, Love Big

Category Archives: Grace

“Grace always shocks. Grace always stuns. Grace is always what we need. It’s what everyone groping around lost in the dark has to know: turn toward grace and you turn on all the lights.” ~Ann Voskamp

She was waiting for me when I returned to my car. I could see right away she was furious.

“You are SO inconsiderate! You parked right in front of my mailbox! How dare you!“

My heart was pounding as I took a deep breath and considered my options. Perhaps a sarcastic comment about the wisdom of buying a house right across the street from a school? Or maybe I could just give her a dirty look, get in my car, and quickly drive away? How dare she lie in wait for me, then stand in the street screaming and shaking her finger at me?

However, since I had spent time in prayer earlier that morning, the Holy Spirit had followed me there and was whispering something else entirely.

She is hurting. Show her love. Show her grace.

A little disappointed to be robbed of my opportunity for a witty comeback or a dramatic stand, I decided to take the high road. I looked her in the eye and listened quietly until she ran out of words.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “You are right. I shouldn’t have parked there. This must be so frustrating for you. I’m really very sorry.”

She paused and then, not knowing how to deal with my response, she turned on her heel and stomped back into her house.

As I got back in my car, I was still shaking with emotion. The intensity of her anger made me feel vulnerable, and I was still struggling with the desire to lash out at her in return. In the past, I would have felt justified in returning fire for fire, unloading on her in retaliation. On this occasion, proximity to the Spirit led me to choose differently.

I wish I could say I always choose grace.

Several years later, I had the opportunity to learn more about the woman I met that day when she signed up for a Bible study…

Since I strapped it on my wrist, I have logged over 73,000 steps, primarily in my house. The most entertaining thing about the Fitbit so far has been the reaction of my elderly dog, Dobby. For those of you unfamiliar with a Fitbit, you can set up the watch-like receiver to notify you at the end of each hour when you have not achieved your hourly step minimum. What this looks like at my house is me jumping out of my chair once an hour and marching around in circles with my dog following behind me wondering where we are going.

Because he is 14 years old and I am young and spry, I often catch up to him as we round a corner. And then, because he is mostly deaf, I startle him. Occasionally, he takes a shortcut through the kitchen and takes the lead.

My husband and I find this endlessly amusing. Clearly, it is time for all of us to go back to work because Dobby is confused and exhausted.

In addition to using a Fitbit to get my butt moving, I am also jumping on another popular bandwagon this January. For the last couple of years, I have joined many of you in choosing one word to be my “theme” word for the year. One proponent of the One Word calls it the “un-resolution” and says:

Our resolutions seldom work because they are based on the type of person we’re tired of being rather than who God wants us to become. Plus, resolutions can be “broken,” leaving no room for the process of growth. What if our hopes for the year ahead centered instead on who God wants us to become, and the transformation process?

In 2016, my word was Brave: no surprise to those of you who read my blog regularly. Brave was my goal, my focus, the object of my passion and curiosity. Throughout the year, personally and professionally, I considered what it might mean to be brave and what, if anything, my faith in God had to do with it. In moments of choice, I viewed my options through the lense of the word Brave.

On the first Sunday of Advent in 2008, we received a call that my father had finally lost his battle with alcoholism. The next week or so, as we drove back and forth to North Carolina to make funeral arrangements, I struggled with a swirl of emotions: grief, loss, and sadness mixed with anger and regret. Here I was in the midst of this fresh loss right smack in the middle of the Christmas season and everything felt raw.

Christmas was hard that year.

That year, I found particular comfort in the familiar words from Isaiah 9 we read and sing so often during the Christmas season. That year, I clung to these words like never before.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned… For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9: 2, 6

Wonderful Counselor
While professional counselors can be an important part of our support system during difficult times in our life, this version of the word “counselor” means much more. In this context, the word counselor would be better translated as “extraordinary strategist,” more like someone with the capacity for planning a winning military strategy than a therapist.

Jesus is a “strategist” that is more wonderful than we can comprehend or understand because he sees the big picture that I cannot. Those times in my life when I don’t know where to turn, when I am confused, troubled or looking for answers, I can experience Jesus as my wonderful counselor. As I seek his wisdom, the answer may come as that still small voice in my spirit, in the wise words of a friend, in the discovery of the perfect scripture, or perhaps just enough strength to endure a situation where the answer is still unknown to me. With that gift of wisdom or insight, comes the incomprehensible realization that I am never alone.

Almighty God
There are times in our lives when our circumstances are just too big, too scary, too overwhelming to face. Continue reading →

Like this:

When I was in my forties, I asked my mom, who was in her sixties, “Mom, at what age did you finally feel like a real grown up?”

“I’ll let you know,” she said. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

I thought being a grown-up would be a little less–I don’t know–messy. I thought it would be a little less haphazard–fewer stops and starts, a bit more consistency. I guess I thought I would have it a little (okay, a lot) more together, and be a bit closer to the perfect ideal I had in mind when I was younger.

After fifty-two years of research on the subject and with a firm grasp of the obvious, I am beginning to understand that I will not be able to achieve anything close to perfection in this lifetime. Perhaps perfection isn’t exactly the right word, but the more I think about the things that keep me stuck, the more I realize I have secretly harbored an unrealistic vision of what being a grown-up looks like. I expected a certain completeness, a sense of having arrived at the final version of me. I had hoped to achieve a clarity of calling; the right balance of work and play; healthy relationships with food, my body, my family, my friends, my money, my colleagues, the church, and God. Check, check, check. All done! Yay team!

The trouble begins when I interpret anything less than this ideal as failure.

It doesn’t help that everyone else seems to have figured out how to be a grown-up. Whether I’m at my kids’ school, at work, or on social media, examples of the perfect woman appear to abound. Everyone else seems to have found a way to do it all and make it look easy. From Pinterest-worthy birthday parties and elaborately designed gift baskets for the charity auction to well-behaved children changing the world, there are no shortage of reminders of the ways our performance doesn’t quite measure up. If only we could balance all the demands on our attention as seamlessly as our friends appear to on Facebook!

And don’t get me started on the pressure of pulling off the perfect Christmas! Will this year be the year we finally do the family Advent devotions? Does it still count if my children are now twenty and twenty-two?

When I make my goal a vision of perfection or being “complete,” the inevitable mistakes and detours of life become the enemy, and feelings of failure are the result. When I compare my real life to someone else’s online highlight reel, I always come up short. My perceived failures define me, and I am never, ever enough.

Here is what I am discovering: every single one of us is making it up as we go along. That friend who seems to have it all together is just as scared and unsure as I am. The person who seems to have all the answers has struggles and challenges I just don’t see. The older I get, the more comfortable I have become with the knowledge that I will never “arrive”–and neither will anyone else. We are all in process, all still learning, all still growing towards the people God has created us to be. When I believe other women have it all together in a way I don’t yet, I perpetuate the myth of perfection and feed the culture of competition and comparison that keeps us hiding from one another.

Like this:

We call our fourteen-year-old Bichon by the name Dobby. If you are not a Harry Potter fan, Dobby is the name of one of the beloved house elves in the popular book series about the wizard world. He is one of the heroes in the story. We got our Dobby when my girls were five and seven, near the beginning of our family’s love affair with these books. We started reading the books out loud to them when they were new readers, but they quickly graduated to exploring the adventures of Harry, Ron and Hermione on their own. When the last several volumes were released, we began ordering two copies because our family of four could not possibly bear to take turns with only one book.

Bad mom alert: I may or may not have suggested to one of my girls that they could skip their homework to read Harry Potter so that I could get my hands on one of our copies more quickly. Luckily, the books were usually released in the summer.

To further convince you of our Harry Potter obsession devotion, last year over the girls’ Christmas break from college, we re-watched all eight Harry Potter movies as a family. In case you are wondering, 19 hours and 40 minutes is how long it takes to complete this movie marathon and no, we did not do it in one sitting.

When Universal Studios in Orlando opened the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park in 2010, our family was understandably intrigued. We vowed to go, but life had gotten particularly busy with high school activities and dreams of college by then, so we never made it.

Until last weekend.

So why am I telling you all of this? Don’t worry, gentle reader. Although I know you love me, I promise I am not going to subject you to a slideshow of our family vacation (ok, maybe a few photos but only enough to demonstrate my point. You are welcome.)

I am thinking about the word delight today and I wanted to paint a picture for you. As I began to write this post, I sat quietly and tried to conjure up an image of the word delight and this is the what came to mind. Continue reading →

Have you been watching the news lately? Or spending any time on Facebook?

UGH! I know, right?

Although I have strong opinions, I am not going to go into a rant here. You’re welcome. Just promise me, one way or another, you will go vote on November 8th. Even if you don’t love either of the candidates, voting is a privilege and responsibility. Pick one. If you can’t decide, feel free to contact me and I will be happy to tell you which one you should choose. #NeverTrump

IN THE MEANTIME, how do we survive these next three weeks until election day? In this world full of cynical, angry, LOUD voices, how do we maintain our equilibrium and choose the joy, peace and love of Jesus instead?

I am not advocating a policy of disengagement or denial. Rose colored glasses are not the answer either. Our country is facing serious issues and we all need to get involved, get informed and get to the polls. Yet, if you are like me, you may be spending more time than you would care to admit getting pulled into an emotional tailspin by the deteriorating rhetoric of angry finger pointing. My blood pressure cannot survive another three weeks of this level of collective rage and despair.

This past Sunday, my pastor Tom began a new sermon series about gratitude, arguably one of my favorite topics. Choosing gratitude, without being too dramatic, has likely saved my life in many ways, so I am a big fan. At the end of the sermon, he invited us to take a 21 day gratitude challenge.

Every day, for the next 21 days, we agreed to intentionally and thoughtfully express appreciation to another human being. Whether in person, by email or with an old fashioned note of thanks, the challenge is to notice the loveliness of the human beings God has placed in our lives and TELL THEM about it!

Cynicism, pessimism and self-righteous anger, unfortunate by products of recent current events, don’t look good on me and frankly cramp my style. I much prefer the joy-filled Jesus girl aesthetic Continue reading →